Deer & Deer Hunting Forums: White Tail Deer Hunting Forum

While this may be difficult for many hunters - who have complained the DNR's deer population estimates have been too high - to believe, the SAK model may be skewed low by inaccurate buck recovery rates.

Here is a link to a recap of the study. In this linked story there is a link to the full study.

So hunters in the North actually look to have been right all along. Predator impacts are as much as human hunting impacts, that makes for a tough sell for Foresters saying the populations are hurting the habitat. More likely seems that the lack of forestry harvest and established old growth forest need tending to produce the habitat required to support a more robust northern deer population that can sustain such high predation rates.